think. it was like. that you know the price is the only industry specifically mention in the constitution. that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy which recall for us. a little. bit like you know i'm sorry and on this show we were revealed the picture of what's actually going on and we go beyond identifying the truth rational debate and a real discussion critical issues facing america. ready to join the movement and welcome they take. a long time arm in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture tonight the day after labor day we're bringing you

a special program on the state of working people in america we're calling it the labor picture last question is like why is the fate of the working class intertwined with the fate of democracy in america how do we rebuild the middle class that the reagan revolution has destroyed over the past thirty two years and as the oligarchy get richer and richer while working people continue to slip into poverty what will the future bring all that and more into night's labor picture special. welcome to the labor picture my uncle king saunders seen here in the right hand picture at my parents' wedding was a newspaperman your ported for several papers during his career and from one nine hundred thirty eight to the one nine hundred fifty s. he was the editor of the motor wheel news. weekly newspaper for one of the big auto

plants in lansing michigan all the paper was paid for and published by the motor wheel company it covered mostly labor issues in the may fifteenth one nine hundred thirty eight edition of the motor real news uncle king published an illustration that showed our wages the typical income of working people as opposed to rent and interest income the typical income of rich people had been steadily rising since the civil war as you can see quote in eight hundred fifty approximately thirty eight percent of the national income was dispersed or paid out in wages and salaries by one thousand and nine that figure had increased to fifty four percent and today and this was written in may have one hundred thirty eight sixty six point five percent of the national income is dispersed as wages and salaries the highest percentage on record today as you can see from this graphic from the new york times the percentage is below forty nine percent we're back to where we were before the presidency of teddy roosevelt all while corporate profits are soaring as

a center on budget and policy priorities noted before the great bush crash even commerce department data released today show that the share of national income going to wages and salaries in two thousand and six was at its lowest level on record with data going back to nine hundred twenty nine share of national corporate national income captured by corporate profits in contrast was at its highest level on record the american working class is in crisis and that's why tonight on the labor picture we're going to go beyond the business pages of the mainstream media to take a deeper look at what's really going on in the american economy. to help us understand the state of the american working class i'm joined now by sara jaffe labor reporter with in these times and host of the belabored podcast with the set magazine john nichols author and washington correspondent with the nation magazine and stuart a cuff that or an oregon union organizer and author thank you to all of you for

joining me then i get to the state of the working class we start with. with excuse me john john you are my little rant about g.o.p.'s shrinking share of g.d.p. what accounts for this back when my uncle was publishing his newspaper sixty six and a half percent of the national income went in wages and salaries the highest percentage on record the jobs now just a lesser or we're not creating well paying jobs some jobs pay a lot more if you're a c.e.o. or an executive at a major corporation you're making a lot of money more than ever but a couple things have happened that are really important first off tom we have had now more than twenty years of trade policies that have not only shipped johnson factories overseas but also depress our industries in a way that makes it much harder for people to make a demand for a fair wage there is a manufactured if you will competition not only between the u.s.

and other countries but also between states and so you really have a race to the bottom there and that's affected wages the other ten times is the simplest of all american equations frederick douglass said powers concedes nothing without to me and as organized labor has been undermined and weakened structurally by the courts and by our legislatures and at times by our congress and even the white house. going back as you referenced reagan as we have seen a weakening of unions in any united states we have seen a steady chipping away at those wages so you can't do you make these run john thank you. right now only eleven point three percent of american workers belong to a union by ninety in one thousand nine hundred one by comparison it was twenty percent of all american workers were unionized back in the second late thirty's early forty's it was a third i mean this is a huge decline so why the decline of the unions. oh you say the easy questions for

me tom. it's not a really simple answer but it is you know basic fact that big business has been fighting a war on workers well since the beginning and there was a brief period of time where workers were if not winning the war at least making some gains and since that happened since we saw the wagner act in the thirty's as you said there's been a concerted effort by business to get rid of that and like john mentioned there's been a lot of willingness from politicians lately of both parties to help them do it ok . john a new report. from the economic policy institute. ok a new report from the economic policy institute finds that wages in the u.s. have to remain flat for a decade i'm sorry this stewart report also reveals the white productivity grew by seven point seven percent between two thousand and seven and two thousand and thirteen wages fell for the bottom seventy percent of wage earners and since one

thousand seventy nine wage growth has been very weak with the average worker only seen an increase of about five percent so store one of the reasons for the weak wage growth in america what can be done about it well there's a lot can be done about it the biggest reason for the weak wage growth in america is that we're losing heavily unionized industries like manufacturing and we're building non-unionized industries like the service sector and and while manufacturing grew in the forty's because of the war in the fifty's because the expansion of the industrial age in the united states workers had the right to form unions today they don't so in the growing. service sector workers do not have an effective right to form unions and to bargain collectively that's number one number two we could rebuild an effective and robust manufacturing sector in this country if there were the will to do it and the will to invest in it and as germany

does cooperation between business their government and the unions you know people who criticize. criticize manufacturing in this country should look at sherman e they sacrifice nothing they've got a huge. export. export credit and they're heavy manufacturing society an economy and they create a lot of wealth that way we on the other hand are not creating wealth by making thing. in fact we are further destroying our our manufacturing base john analysis of the economic policy institute shows that the current pace of job growth is still slower than what we need for our economy to return to full employment pretty much any time in the foreseeable future and at the current pace it's going to take more than five years before we get back to the three great

depression unemployment rate what's keeping america's economic recovery down and walk away due to speeded up. what's keeping it down is austerity the united states has been practicing austerity on a milder model than the europeans but still austerity for quite a long time now the fact of the matter is that in two thousand and nine we had a steep loss in jobs we should have made massive investments in direct job creation as well as the stimulation of job creation unfortunately the what should have been a jobs bill became a tax policy bill it was it was kind of torn apart undermined by the senate and the fact of the matter is we have yet as a country to make the level of investment and a level of commitment on things like infrastructure and job creation that we should have done you know now four years ago that has slowed down our recovery terribly and in combination with our bad trade policies we end up in

a situation where it's sort of amazing that we have even the level of job growth that we have but we are really only one kind of bankers manipulation or wall street stumble or way from dipping back into a recessionary moment so the fact of the matter is we should be advocating very loudly and very aggressively for infrastructure investment job creation investment now even as there is some growth because we've got to build it up you got it sara thank think about those twenty one percent of the jobs lost during the great recession were low wage paying thirteen eighty three an hour or less but fifty eight percent of the jobs that have been replaced you know regained over the last four years fall into that same low wage category does this mean that bad low paying jobs are coming back first or does that mean that the so-called great recession good jobs have been come back but with slashed wages and benefits. it's both i mean we've seen the fastest growing jobs in this country are retail sales fast food

service and home care work which pays an average of ten dollars an hour and for a lot of those fast food workers thirteen eighty three. would be a huge raise but also because of that the downward pressure on wages means that even you know there was a recent article in the new york times talking about a guy who wanted to hire manufacturing workers for ten bucks an hour we're seeing the race to the bottom as john mentioned bringing pressure on all the jobs wages are going downward for everyone. ok sir thank you very much john nichols thanks for joining us tonight sir and stuart stick around for an explorer thank you. for tonight's poverty notice we're talking about food insecurity according to a new study by researchers from harvard university princeton university and the university of warwick the more a person struggles financially the less he or she can devote brain processes to completing other tasks or words when you're struggling to survive day to day the way to worrying about providing for your family prevents you from accomplishing

other daily tasks and one of the biggest worries facing poverty stricken americans that day is food insecurity food insecurity increased in most states from two thousand and one to two thousand and eleven and two in two thousand and nine in two thousand and eleven seven states had substantially higher household food insecurity rates than the national average those states were mississippi texas arkansas alabama georgia california and north carolina and not surprisingly six of those seven states are right to work for less states which never raise their minimum wages above the federal minimum wage of seven dollars twenty five cents. coming up back in july rick snyder got his wish when detroit became the largest city in american history to file for bankruptcy and now detroit's largest union is trying to stop snyder's plan to sell one of our country's great cities to the highest bidder more on that union's plan and what it means for the future of the labor movement after the break.

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couldn't take three. years. arrangement three. three. three. three broke video for your media project.

and tonight special local for a lot of labor panel we're going to take a quick look at labor stories making news around the country i'm joined by sara jaffe labor reporter for in these times james ray labor attorney and benefit council for the laborers international union of america and stuart trick labor organizer and author thank you all for joining me and they. start off in michigan and detroit where one of the motor city's most powerful unions the american federation of state county and municipal employees are absent is challenging governor rick snyder and kevin or his little dictator. bankruptcy plan in august the union filed a motion objecting to bankruptcy proceedings on the basis that the city has not negotiated in good faith according to that motion the bankruptcy plan is illegal because michigan's constitution guarantees workers and shins which could be cut off as the city tries to pay off its creditors so james anti worker right wingers are using detroit as a means to bash unions and now it looks like the bankruptcy could be an opportunity

for the left to pitch a battle in the labor movement your thoughts. on the bankruptcy laws in this country or disgrace from a labor perspective. what's moving into the public sector has been happening into the private in the private sector for decades now the bankruptcy courts just very easily allow employers to abrogate their collective bargaining agreements and undermine the wages and the benefits. including pensions so workers have for decades have been counting on and now it's going to play out in detroit. and it's. it's going to be a good forum to have this debate not only in the courts but in society as a whole do you do you think that the workers james do you think the workers are actually going to win this yes i do i think they're going to win it in the courts and i think they're going to win it in the form of of public opinion and they need to because people need to focus in on what's going on in the bankruptcy system it's

in desperate need for reform and it's sort of like in the shadows some people are paying attention maybe detroit will bring it out of the shadows stewart in other bad news for mission workers a state court ruled in august that that state's right to work for less law will cover public employees public sector unions the challenge the constitutionality that law is not as public act three forty nine but now it looks as though their battle may be lost so store just how bad of a loss is this for michigan workers would say it's a very bad loss for michigan workers if you look at wages the wage difference between states that have right to work for less than states that are not right right to work states states that are not a right to work states have much higher wages so it's right to work is simply a way for the radical right wing to weaken labor unions and weaken the demand power of workers and so it's a bad thing i am confident however that the people of michigan will overturn

public at three forty nine just as they overturned rick snyder's anti democratic decree and he he. reintroduced it in a lame duck session. so i know the fight it is is waging in in . michigan it's a long way from being over you know sarah. some good news coming out of the windy city many of the workers who participated in this year's fast food and retail strikes in chicago say that they've seen notable changes in the workplace environment since they first walked off the job in april one macy's worker told in these times that she even received a small pay raise in the wake of this year's strike so you've covered the surge of fast food retail strikes quite extensively in this program a lot or a few times in fact do you think that they're having

a positive impact on the workers the workers organizing committee of chicago. see the group that helped organize some chicago area strikes doesn't actually have any contracts no collective bargaining power is public pressure going to be enough to change the the employee the employer behavior so i think this strikes are definitely having a positive impact on workers on last time i was on with you tom we talked about the fact that i'm workers had walked out in chicago and in new york in two different restaurants because they had no air conditioning and they won their air conditioning back and we also saw workers walk out in a dominoes in new york city because one of their colleagues was fired so what we're seeing is a growth in worker power in the workplace that i'm really impressed by because sort of on a bigger level nobody really knows what the end game for the fast food campaign is it certainly doesn't most likely look like an l r b election for a union for multiple franchises multiple whatever but if we can see workers being able to take power from their bosses and actually take action in the workplace

together that would be a huge improvement for them indeed in august employees of mobile rail solutions a private contractor james that helps service chicago area trains went on strike to protest the firing of three of their coworkers who are an effort to to join with the i.w.w. the workers now say that because mobile real solutions fail to file an objection to the n.l.r.b. be after the after you have the pro union vote their union is now official you're a labor lawyer are the most. rail solution workers correct in the understanding of labor law got about a half a minute here the answer is they're correct it's protected concerted activity what they're what they're doing in their free to form a union it can be a new union does now if we need system you need it's protected concerted activity so they are right great ok we'll see where this goes we'll see how this all plays out stuart james sara thank you all from so much for being with us today thank you thank you. back in two thousand and six congress passed the postal accountability

enhancement act that act requires the post office in just ten sure years to prefund its future health care benefit payments to retirees seventy five years into the future meaning that they have to put aside tens of billions of dollars today to pay for the health of benefits of employees who have not yet been born this requirement sucks of billions of dollars in revenue out of the post office every year by the way the largest unionized employer in the united states and is a burden that no other business or government agency has ever in the history of the world had to bear without that poison pill the republicans slipped in in two thousand and six post office would be running surpluses right now so why aren't more lawmakers up in arms about it i'm joined now by frederick view rolando president of the national association of letter carriers frederick welcome let's talk shop thank you how you doing just fine the two thousand and six law seems like

a pretty obvious attempt to gut the power of the unions here the president the national association of letter carriers how has the postal accountability enhanced an act affected your members well unfortunately there's those in congress that continue to support legislation that would put the postal service out of business for example to prefunding that you refer to this year to date the postal service is actually making money they have a profit of six hundred million dollars delivering the mail one hundred. cent of all the losses can be attributed to the prefunding mandate any legislation that's introduced and there's a couple of bills a bill is come out of the house and a bill that's come out of the senate any bill that doesn't address and correct the prefunding is automatically going to attack america's postal service and the workers that work for the postal service has long as they continue to require this mandate and now there has been there have been a couple of proposals i know bernie sanders got one through that actually roll that

back but the one that everybody seems to be attending to is the carper colburn postal reform act and their sponsors say it's going to fix the post office is that really the case not at all it doesn't again it's as long as you don't address the prefunding which that senate bill does not do it just remember to arises and puts off the famous to later as long as you don't address that as you can see in that bill you're just going to take the service out of the postal service and you're going to attack the workers and that's what those bills to. senator sanders got as i recall. it's been a few weeks since i've discussed it with him but i think you've got over twenty co-sponsors his act has got close to thirty close to thirty why isn't that being pushed harder by by democratic leadership at this point in time i don't know why they aren't supporting that i think they would like to see it come out of the committee and maybe they have some hope that the carper coburn bill could be amended to look like the standard bill replaced by the standards bill because as you stated that bill addresses the prefunding issue and would allow the postal

service to adapt and to grow and to continue to make money frederick we have a little less than a minute left but to what extent even a bernese bill got out of the senate is going to die in the house and it isn't this really going to take another election twenty fourteen it's possible but again there's such great potential in the postal service the internet cause some of the loss in the first class mail but as we can see with the evolution of e-commerce the postal service is continuing to grow leaps and bounds in the sky is the limit with e-commerce they've got great potential to get fully funded pensions they've got fifty billion dollars put aside because of this prefunding that they're not allowed access to it's one of the richest companies you're ever going to find. that's that's extraordinary frederick orlando and like i said they're the largest unionized employer in the country which of course is why. that particular political party went after them shall we say frederick orlando thank you so much for being with us tonight thank you thanks for having me. on the left are natural. when the

obama said to the bones oh my mr miller. it's addition of politically correct that i'm correcting the wall street journal's stephen moore more recently appeared on fox news is your world with neil cavuto to discuss the fast food workers protests that took place across the country last week that's when he proceeded to make these claims. i was. friends of mine who run some of these franchises how do you make how do you make any money on the ninety nine cents menu you know you're selling fries and you know double burger for ninety nine cents billion they have very thin margins and if you. require fifteen dollar an hour wages for some of those workers first of all you're going to have a lot less teenagers hired for those kinds of jobs you're going to have those starter jobs just won't exist and the other thing that will happen neal is exactly

what you just said that they will substitute workers with machines that automated things you know you're wrong on the claim that a higher minimum wage would decrease teenage unemployment is completely falls according to u.c. berkeley economist sylvia l l a grad oh the lead economist in the two thousand and eleven study to look to the relationship between teen unemployment the minimum wage raising the minimum wage would not harm job growth or teenage unemployment or employment and would actually increase worker more alan productivity and that's why stephen moore has been politically correct. drives corporate thought of the month as marquez brothers international marquez brothers is a california based distributor of cheese and dairy products with a history of anti worker bowling although marquez employees voted to join the international brotherhood of teamsters last year that company has spent millions of dollars trying to sabotage the effort and according to teamsters even fired some

union supporters but that's not the worst of it but a group of immigrant marquez brothers workers testified in front of california lawmakers earlier this year about the abuse they'd received at the hands of their employer corporate lawyers follow them into the room and stare them down teamsters have called this a blatant attempt to intimidate workers on live in the very margins of society are despite all this mark has brothers just struck a deal to renew its contract with who else wal-mart you know what they say birds of a feather. together. coming up opponents of a minimum wage increase continue to claim the fast food jobs are filled mostly by entry level teenage workers but as it turns out teenage unemployment in america is at record highs so what's really going on that morning night special national labor relations.

with. its technology innovations all these developments from around russia we've. covered. wealthy british style some time to. market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines and join into the report.

he's. joining me for that a special edition of the big picture is our national labor relations panel because dude i'm on my dude co-director and co-founder of the restaurant opportunities center is united in a span roekel president a national education association and james ray labor attorney and benefits council for the laborers international union of north america thank you all for joining me

let's get started haycock this past thursday thousands of fast food workers coast to coast walked off the job protesting for higher wages and better working conditions workers and fifty u.s. cities for dissipated in that nationwide walkout. what's really driving this nationwide movement for better wages oh you know we have been on them as a whistle roll call for last twelve years in new york and up all over the country now in. we've been pushing for them you know we're still in the process all this time and talking to people would involve their lives on the blogs it's organized and and moving them from from that's fear of that they have been for a long time so now it's time with us in a war cause stand up and it's not acceptable no more it's not acceptable that's less than a war minimum wage for the for the is seen so people are not even making money to

survive people who serve our food clean i would this is cannot even put food on the table that's what's making all these people. go outside and don't know what if they're going to lose their job because they're not making it. james in related news that's the traditional argument is that teenagers are the only ones working fast food minimum wage jobs but it turns out teenage unemployment is at our record very teenage employment is a record low unemployment a record high for the fourth consecutive summer teen unemployment has stayed or near employment at state at or near record lows and experts now fear that a generation of youth are going to be economically stunted with lower earnings and opportunities lower opportunities in the coming years nine hundred ninety nine more than fifty two percent of teens sixteen to nineteen worked a summer job this year that number dropped to thirty two and a quarter percent over june and july so james what's driving this historic decline in teenage unemployment. the problem is that these jobs were created for

teenagers and for second incomes just to supplement the main. breadwinner in the house in an unfortunately. you know we now have heads of households working in these jobs. you know they they have it's matter of survival to have these these these jobs. you know it's. you know you can't this whole generation is like the last generation that it's bad it is just you know they're stuck in these dead end jobs never intended to to produce incomes that you could support a family of. dead us all across the globe teachers are leading the fight for workers' rights in organized labor here in the u.s. public school teachers comprise the largest segment of public schools or sector

workers over half of all unionized public employees in the u.s. are teachers in two thousand and ten governments employed three and a half to three point two million public school teachers about seventy percent unions are the n.e.a. or the teachers federation of america american federation teachers the f.t. no other occupation in america in the united states can claim this union density in national presence so how important are teachers to the labor movement in that state they're absolutely essential for two very important reasons number one when you you cited earlier when you look at what happened in this country from forty seven to seventy nine in those years the hourly wages the wages of the lowest one fifth in the top one fifth all kept pretty much in sync with the rides and productivity in the thirty two years since it is totally the opposite hourly wages are a fraction have gone up a fraction and the top one percent of gone up ten twenty and thirty times full so it's important to the labor movement that these union a teacher stay there and provide

a voice nothing can be can be done about building the middle class without an organized labor movement but the second reason is more important is about the students of america when you silence unions you silence their teachers and educators and support professionals it's our way of giving a voice from the classroom to policymakers in the real losers are kids for cock very very quickly just a half a minute left here there's this this movement about for example our walmart is not a traditional labor movement what are your thoughts on the the survivability of nontraditional labor movements that don't necessarily have the protection of things like the wagner act. you guys going to make it. yes. you know this this movement we have we have all the luxury to go and fight and with a lot of stuff from the national labor relations board so our new movement. that's

we've been fighting for the last twenty years is a new model for people getting together and fighting for themselves. or our company in our war because you know we we go out we organize i was fighting for i was of creating a new model where immigrants people of color and you know lead in their struggle and fight against. injustice happily and that was the case for well done. do dennis family and james ray thank you all for joining me to thank you thank you. in a speech at the nine hundred thirty six democratic national convention president franklin delano roosevelt warned the american people about the power of big business executives and wall street financier's he called them economic royalists argued that the future of american democracy depended on their overthrow. the

economic royalists blame. the end. of america what rarely playing is that we seek to take away. only to america that require they overthrow. the best way to overthrow the power of the economic royalists of course is to unionize the workforce to turn the factory floor office into a small d democracy sounds simple enough right for republicans it made it their top economic priority to bust unions and hand power back to the economic royalists those who that signed the head of the picket line joining me now is near my cave welcome back great to be with you tom good to have you to give the green room was like the lincoln brigade reunion this is quite a show you and i. so why do you hate democracy bags actually speaking

of you know it is democracy going to have the royalists i think what people i think everyone everyone has a soft spot for the worker everyone admires what the labor unions have done in this country to improve benefits of working conditions and pay but it may be too much of a good thing that when the unions defend hacks when the unions defend postal workers who are rude and obnoxious to them when they defend bad teachers when they defend bad cops when they defend bad football players people say what's going on there is that i have the unions on the side of attack that is the weakest and most pathetic of all the arguments that's like saying that was my that was my leading argument tom that that is like saying you know you know we still have people shoplifting shoplifting laws aren't doing any good if there was a shot of let's not look and if there was a shoplifter if you don't you know matter is shoplifters you know union would say leave these people alone with royalists in a union you're going to have a couple of people who are abusing the system just

a couple just but. the flip side of that is the corporate side you've got you've got big corporate i'll what i'm saying is i would put up with a couple of what you're call an axe now in the workplace if if what that means is that we don't have stephen j. holmes like pull a billion dollars out of you know what there are there are thousands of these acts in the polar thousands or how many you know how many teach. how many teachers in new york city just sit in a room because they're not allowed to be fired ask majority of thousands are not hacks yes and yes of course you are offending workers all across i love i love workers you have an alternative solution to democracy in the workplace well let's let's dial back some of this this union power which is not gained at the bargaining table as much as it is that the government has its thumb on the scale of justice in favor of the unions can we have a democracy and a workplace is inherently a kingdom right because we have people who owns everything right so you can't have

democracy in that workplace unless you have a law that says the workers actually have some say you've got to have to take some of that property you've got to have the n.l.r.b. wellness and you know i have power yeah i'm starting to know that monster is unleashed we have strikes at mcdonald's and that's a bad thing in your mind yeah it's a bad thing if i'm waiting for a cheeseburger and fries. come. on i'm sorry don i'm sorry. i'm sorry. you know which to do with. it's the good the bad in the very very i suspect a bungle lee ugly the good guy has been john lewis the georgia congressman joined

in on last thursday's jobs with just as march in atlanta and gave a rousing speech supporting the marchers call for a fifteen dollars living wage for all fast food workers get out. we need move out. we have no way we do it. and that's what it's all about how people get richer and richer. and better and it was a good lawyer. that's right. well said indeed american workers are going through some tough times right now but as long as they have supporters like congressman lewis labor movement will live on the bad. thursdays broadcast of his radio show the conservative shock jock blast of the fast food workers strikes jumpstart of the labor movement this past week it was. this is not a legitimate protest on behalf of workers at mickey d's who feel like they're

underpaid this is an organized rent a mob type of thing. this is just classic right wing anti worker propaganda. i mean sure fast food workers got a little help from unions like sci you but the fact the matter is that the real force behind last thursday's strike was the desire of thousands of everyday workers to have a living wage to become part of the middle class to be to have the american dream without that desire to help would not have. meant a thing as usual rushes this whole hog. and a very very ugly distress gene distress genes according to a new report from the group's war on want and students and scholars against corporate misbehavior pre torn jeans like the one seen here are just bad fashion their deadly fashion to stress genes get their weathered look through

a process called sandblasting which involves firing a brace of sand onto denim under high pressure in a machine booth or via an air gun attached to a hose an air constant exposure is sandblasting puts millions of workers at denham factories across the world at risk of developing scoliosis or silica silicosis and a long disease caused by breathing in sand particles all this of course so wealthy consumers can pretend they were so big they wore their jeans out because the irony of that is outrageous and very very

. last time was a new alert animation scripts scare me a little. there is breaking news tonight and we are continuing to follow the breaking news. alexander's family cry tears of joy and great things other that had to be added in

a court of law thrown alive there's a story made sort of movies playing out in real life. more like. me.

right now giant trans national corporations are doing everything they can to screw over the working class by putting profits ahead of the well being of their employees fortunately the working class is wised up to the game as the corporate america is plain and is fighting back against profit driven corporate tyranny earlier i had a. speak with james hoffa general president of the international brotherhood of teamsters. what is the state of working america right across the globe right now workers are suppressed we see what's going on what's happened since two thousand and ten we see right to work in michigan right to work in indiana we see basically a full court press against workers to keep their wages down to take away their power and you touched on the fact of what's called globalization globalization is

another word to move my job to mexico if that's globalization and we know what it is and basically we're losing good jobs in this country in the old days you could work in a factory you could work at a machine shop you could sweep some place out and those jobs are gone and urban areas and basically everywhere in this country there are less jobs today than ever before and less people are working and what's happened is that wages have stagnated despite the fact that we have inflation so it means people have gone backwards so what do we see people having one job to job three jobs trying to survive in america that's why you have this building up of this frustration that you're start to see on television but one of the problems i think we have is the media doesn't cover it when there is a plant closing and thousands of people lose their job do you see a.b.c. n.b.c. they're not there is not a it's not it is not news when a plant closes down and moves to mexico and three hundred people are thrown out of

their jobs it's not news but it affects them like never before maytag newton iowa they closed their plant down thousands of people lost their jobs i don't remember that being on the news and these are the kind of things we should be focusing on to where raise the awareness about what's really going on in this country that are good jobs are leaving this country and what's left is the hamburger flipping jobs that we talked about you know that's only thing that's left is maybe you know working at mcdonald's or burger. thing or walmart for eight bucks an hour that's not a job and you can't support a family but with the jobs that's that are less even the burger flipping jobs that used to be that those rancher level jobs used to be the teenagers did that now the average age of somebody working at mcdonald's is twenty eight years old these are these are adults these are people that they're in their prime child bearing rearing years they should be getting a good pay doesn't this also argue for at least a raise the minimum wage and ideally unionization in the service sector what

exactly what we're seeing now is the people working at mcdonald's can't find another a better job but they could find a better job they wouldn't be at mcdonald's and many people are in flint michigan detroit michigan downtown in manhattan and you know they wish they had a job because a lot of people have families and like you said these are not kids these are not seventeen year old kids like in the old days work there for the summer that's not what's going on today it's completely different these people are adults many of them have children they want health care they need to have a job and they're willing to work forty hours what do we run run into with mcdonald's and they say well you can work twenty one hours you can work twenty schedule for twenty one hours just enough that you can survive and even in forty hours you couldn't make it you know at eight nine ten dollars an hour you can't live on four hundred dollars a month you can't support a family by the time you do the deed auction you're getting three hundred dollars so what's wrong is we should have

a higher minimum wage in australia it's sixteen dollars is your economy so different than ours and the answer is we should do something like that when that when you have higher wages like that higher minimum wage higher whatever what happens the answer is everybody benefits those people go out and spend money they consume they make the whole economy go they go to the store you know they buy food they buy groceries they basically do things that make the economy work make other companies you know people around them work so it's a whole multiplier effect of money so we have to. raise the minimum wage so that and the australian economy is much more resilient again and it's not affected by it they didn't go through the crash that we went through they basically have survived the different economies a lot smaller but the answer is they could they could do it and why can they do it and we can't why can they take care of their people and we can take care of our people president james hoffa you're doing great work thank you so much for you to seize it it was.

crazy a large exotic dancers of the world unite for over thirty years the last the lady gentleman's club in san francisco california has pleased customers and employees alike its top notch strip teases and since one thousand nine hundred six at least fair wages that year the last the ladies dancers became the first strip joint crew in the country to unionize in two thousand and three of those dancers took their labor activism step further when they bought the club from its owners and turned it into a worker owned collective fun all stopped on monday however when the last three laid closed its doors for good joints workers owners so they could no longer afford the pricey bay area rent although the last the lady may be no more it's almost two decades long one is the only unionized strip club in the country to be an

inspiration for exotic dancers and workers everywhere and together fight their bosses because to borrow a phrase from an old labor tune there is power in a lap dance. small deed to mocker see in our small our republic has been collapsing for the last thirty years we're rapidly reversing three hundred years of progress kingdoms and feudalism and serfdom were around for millennia. until the evolutionary leap to democracy with the enlightenment in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. in the old feudal societies the king or the local lords owned everything including the land the buildings the animals even the people king and those close to him own you

and your spouse and your children some kings even exercise the right of the first night or the king took the virginity of every new bride hierarchy patriarchy and massage were all intertwined with feudalism and were rationalized as being biblical and the way it's always been done the eighteenth in one thousand centuries saw an explosion of anti-feudal democracy the american revolution through a whole variety of uprisings across europe and across the rest of the world in small d. democratic nations people had a say in how things were done and who and what but feudalism didn't die it merely moved it it moved out of the arena of governance and into the arena of commerce the invention and sixteen zero one by queen elizabeth the first of the

limited liability corporation a new type of fee feudal kingdom was established an economic one and it persists to this day complete with its traditional elements of hierarchy patriarchy and massaging the c.e.o. as the king often lives and travels like one senior executives of the lords in a mass of great wealth and control the lives and fates of those under them the workers or service and if they dare defy the king or is lords they can be punished in ways up to and including imprisonment and like an ancient feudal times women find themselves at the bottom of the hierarchy often with little power unless a than men. indeed as recently as this year numerous republican men in congress voted against laws that would prevent employers from engaging in economic physical or even sexual violence against their female employees. while democracy confronted

kingdoms back in seventy and seventy six democracy confronted the feudal corporate state in one nine hundred thirty two. workplaces had become kingdoms and workers were treated like service in a feudal state until f.d.r.'s democratic evolutionary leap in the one nine hundred thirty s. with the way agner act the national labor relations act that act f.d.r. and congress inserted democracy into the workplace they did it by creating the right to unionize it's that right created a genuine democracy in the workplace a major evolutionary leap forward both for business and for workers and most importantly for our democratic republic to work marvelously wages of workers increased a middle class emerged c.e.o.'s had wealth and power but it was not unlimited i mean they lived well but not like kings the ever c.e.o.

only made thirty times as much as average workers. but then came the reagan revolution against democracy in the workplace and the feudal lords rose up again anti-democratic and pro feudalism forces have been pushing back against democracy in the workplace since reagan declared war against organized labor in one thousand nine hundred one and it has not only hurt our workplace it's also hurt democracy in our nation a democracy that once existed both in government and in the workplace the reagan revolution pitted worker against worker tore communities apart and rich the kings and lord at the top of these corporate feudal dynasties workers meanwhile have been reduced to serfdom and now confront a new form of wage slavery if we care about strengthening and restoring democracy in the united states of america we must begin with our work places work or involvement the workplace is the core of democracy in the workplace this was so obvious to the germans of the enshrined in their law and constitution that half of

every large corporations board of directors must be made up of union representatives as long as democracy is kept out of our workplaces like with the aggressive union busting efforts of wal-mart amazon mcdonalds our larger sense of community which derives from local democracy is damaged and diminished and that in turn harms our political democracy as it makes people disempowered and cynical revitalising democracy in our workplaces will help revitalize democracy our neighbors in our nation from local levels like school boards all the way up to congress all we need to do is look back at the experience of the fifty's sixty's and seventy's those were periods of high levels of democracy in the workplace and they coincided with high levels of democratic activism and participation across the political spectrum. like germany we should mandate that every board of directors have strong union representation to do that we must also restore the right to

democracy in the workplace the right to unionize abolishing the taft hartly act is the most important first step toward that goal and women's make it easier for workers to unionize through simple systems like card check abraham lincoln the first us president to recognize the right of workers to unionize and strike a quote of the preamble to our constitution when talking about making america a more perfect union from the founding of our republic in the in until the one nine hundred eighty s. we have always been steadily working on perfecting democracy in america if we are truly to call ourselves a democratic nation a democratic republic we must extend democracy into our workplaces. and that's the way it is the night tuesday september third two thousand and thirteen and don't forget democracy begins with you get out there get active take your.

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today larry king. dr gary small brain the brain age is just like the rest of our bodies as. why we have to take good care of them on how to improve your memory nine hundred forty five for the average person you can detect memory loss and to feel mindful about the choices you make and memory will be retrieved plus rewritten medicated society eighty percent of the above this is because we use it of optional and large an event that's next on larry king now. welcome to larry king now today the super brain part.